TMNT Purpose
by mysteryred
Summary: Inspired by the 2014 movie scene where the boys were trying to see the world through a drainage grate. I present a kid version of Raph having a down night. Rated for language. One-shot. I do not own TMNT.


When you walk in purpose, you collide with destiny. –Ralph Buchanan

It's just a drainage grate. To them anyway. It's where the water goes when it rains, like it is now. It's nothing any of them ever give a second thought to. Not unless they drop their keys, or money down it. Although they sure do that often enough.

To me it's a window to a world that will never understand me. And I sit beneath it, night after night, staring into the pale, heatless light that shines through the slats. It—the light—flickers, blinks, and dances across my concrete prison.

I listen to the sounds, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, followed by the occasional blaring horn and cursing. I make sure to memorize those words. They may come in handy later, some of them do now. Then there's the music blaring from the TV's in the store across the street. Usually good stuff. Not tonight. Tonight it's a mopey, sappy song, but I'm so trapped I can't change the channel.

The rain mixes with the down beat, and I try to choose a noise to focus on. I groan, plop down on the grimy cement, caked in grease, oil, mud, and I don't want to think about what else. I rub my face, swipe at the moisture building in my eyes. I must be getting' a cold, or somethin'.

I'm not surprised when the water dripping into the runoff starts to freeze. My breath hangs in white puffs before my face, and I watch them roll out through my nostrils, switch breathing through my mouth so I can better see it float away. When it's this bitter out, the world seems to get a strange haze about it, like all the edges have gone soft. I snort, and a small cloud rises before my watery eyes.

I look at the sparse light in front of me, run my palm through it, watching it break over my three fingered hand. My world stinks like shit, twenty-four seven, three-sixty-five. It's filthy, coated in words I can't even say right. I pull the beanie—I knit, down further over my head, think my brain might freeze. Should get back to the lair where it's warmer, but I want to stay a little longer.

It's like I'm sitting at a door that I'll never fit through. And on the other side— I stand on my toes, press my face to the grate, hear boots sloshing in the downpour— on the other side of this opening, is a world of heat, warmth, toys that don't require your brother to disinfect and repair them, clothes that don't reek of garbage, threadbare, and full of holes… Places where people go to buy what they need, and if they don't have it someone will make it for them. Places I can never go.

My stomach hurts, rolls, and churns. That's another thing up there. Food. And it smells good. Surely most of them don't eat scraps that don't look quite like what they were supposed to be, bearing a sour stench, or drink milk well past its date.

My shoulders slump, my heart yearning for many things it will never know, that will not be. A warm, clean place to sleep, to not smell like the shelter I keep…

The cold seeps in, slows my blood, makes me drowsy, and I stare at the broken beams shining through the metal grating. I scoff. It's not even real light.

And what does the sky even look like? My heart flutters. What does fresh air, even city air—above ground air, what does it smell and feel like when the wind blows on your face? I want to know.

My hands open and close as a great ache builds inside me. It may not be today, but someday soon, I'm going to walk through the door, even if I never fit—I'll find away, I'll squeeze through, claw my way out if I have to. Someday I will feel real light on my face, even if it's only from the moon. I'll take it. I'll take what I can get.

I'll go as far as I can beyond this cell, to the very limits—I look at my two-toed feet, my human shaped arms and legs, my reptilian bridge, the edges of my shell, my pebbled skin… I'll go as far in their world as my mutant body will take me. Even if it means I can't walk among them, even if they will never accept me… I'm still alive and I want to feel like it.

Hell, dogs have more freedoms than me.

Gah. He can't keep me down here forever. I won't stay… but I might miss Mikey, even if he is a dweeb. Don't know if I'll miss Leo's goody-two-shoes crap… or Donnie's correctin' me when I say somethin' not right. I look up and down the tunnel, wonder if they're lookin' for me yet. I'm s'posed to be knittin' a new hat for Leo, he just got over the flu. I need to finish that scarf for Donnie, and Mikey's mittens. We don't need to be losin' any of the few fingers we have. I shiver, my muscles growing stiff as the temperature continues to drop.

The rain stops, the sudden quiet catching my attention. I stand up again, wrap my fingers around the slats, see little white specks gathering on the street. I look down, see the broken rearview mirror Donnie made so we can look out better, stick it through the opening and turn it away from the store. My snout bumps against the metal as I try to get the angle just right …

Snow is falling, seems like by the thousands, big, fat, fluffy flakes that land on the mirror and melt against the fractured glass.

"Hey, Raph! The weather says it's snowing!" Mikey sloshes through the run-off and I wonder if he'll ever understand what he's walking in. I try to jerk my mirror-holding hand back in, bump myself in the face and growl.

Mikey pushes up alongside me, smashes his snout to the opening. "It is snowing! Isn't it pretty?" I hand him the mirror, turn away. "Hey, Raph, you're not still sore cas' I got sick on your comic are ya? I mean, I knew dinner tasted funny tonight but—"

"Its fine, Mikey." It doesn't matter half the pages were drawn on with marker anyway.

I watch my little brother, straining to catch flakes on his fingers then pinching up the slush gray mess piling up against the opening. His eyes sparkle in the fluorescent light, the snow seeming to cast a silvery glow over his freckled face.

He deserves better than this.

But he always looks so clueless and happy. He glances at me, grinning like a fool, and I feel the corners of my mouth tip up just a bit.

Nights like this, he comes around trying to cheer me up, and I realize that if I ever do leave, it won't be for long— maybe never without them. Because we may not have carpet beneath our feet, or beds where the springs don't stick out in places and the blankets are frayed on the edges… but my sensei keeps us warm, bandages our wounds, nurses us to health, makes sure we're fed and tells us bedtime stories. He talks to us better than some of the dads I hear barking at their kids on the street at night.

No, I have something that can't be bought…

Where Donnie is the brains, Leo the hero, and Mikey the innocent— I have a job, a duty to protect them. My heart beats, in a steady rhythm, to a tune I recognize, the same beat that moves me, drives me to keep breathing, to train hard…

See when you have brothers who can see light even when there is none to be found, and without looking for it as hard as I do… well I'd be a fool to walk away from all of that.

No. My heart beats with purpose…

It's called family.


End file.
